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Who needs algebra? That question muttered by many a frustrated student over the years has become a vigorous debate among American educators, sparked by a provocative new book that argues required algebra has become an unnecessary stumbling block that forces millions to drop out of high school or college. “One out of 5 young Americans does not graduate from high school. This is one of the worst records in the developed world. Why? The chief academic reason is they failed ninth-grade algebra,” said political scientist Andrew Hacker, author of “The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions.” Hacker, a professor emeritus...

What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs? Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity? Or, if global warming were the fault of mankind, you trusted that the slight increases would not make all that much difference? The Los Angeles Times would not print your letter to the editor to that effect. The CEO of Apple Inc. might advise that you should "get out of this stock." Or maybe if you were a skeptical climatologist,...

The authors of a textbook used at University of South Carolina earned an 'F' in Ronald Reagan 101, according to several conservative Gamecock students. “Introduction to Social Work & Social Welfare: Critical Thinking Perspectives” portrays the 40th president as a sexist who was insensitive to minorities and whose main accomplishments were cutting taxes, jacking up defense spending and "slashing" social programs. The book states that conservatives like Reagan "take a pessimistic view of human nature.” “I was absolutely shocked and was tempted to throw the book away,” Anna Chapman, 19, a sophomore majoring in political science, told FoxNews.com. “I would...

College classrooms are supposed to be politically neutral, not indoctrination centers for liberalism. Yet, we have conservative parents who save money for decades to send their children to universities that teach everything conservatives believe is wrong. We have Republican state legislatures that fund colleges whose first goal is to teach college kids to vote Republicans out of office. We have colleges that claim to care deeply about diversity; yet they work overtime to keep conservative professors and conservative speakers off campus. It's time to draw a line in the sand and say, "Communists, bombers, criminals, deviants, and political activists masquerading...

Gabriel Lugo is president of the faculty senate at UNC-Wilmington. He's generally a nice fellow with a good sense of humor. But, unfortunately, on August 9th, he sent out a wildly unprofessional memo to the entire university faculty. His memo lends credence to my concern that the UNC system has become little more than a political lobby for the Democratic legislative agenda. Thus I will soon propose that we rename our school DNC-Wilmington to reflect the fact that it is an institution committed to politics rather than honest intellectual inquiry. In a section of his memo allegedly updating them on...

Hey, Dad. If you’re going to send your kid to a public school or a state run university, then you’ve got to teach your child not to just sit there in class, like a nice boy, and take whatever propaganda the “progressives” shove down their pie hole. The Conservative/traditionalist is the rebel of our day. “The Man” and “The Machine” on campus to rage against is not stodgy traditionalism, but rank socialism and its moral and political vacuity. Meet the new boss — it’s not the same as the old boss. For Dads who want their kids to make a...

If a large, powerful corporation is allowed to inflict the business model view of higher education upon our institution, we will have a dystopic vision on the purpose of education that is skewed toward the advancement of the production of cheap laborers who are incapable of thinking abstractly. Student’s stamped-out, watered-down degrees will be nothing more than technical training for the workforce -- not for a more just, equal, collective, peaceful society.

It’s easy to pity Kremlinologists. These are people who spent years, even decades, studying the Soviet Union. Their job was to explain why that country did the things it did, even though those actions so often seemed counterproductive. Suddenly, though, the USSR dissolved and the Kremlinologists were out of work. Louis Michael Seidman hopes to join them on the unemployment lines. He’s a “professor of constitutional law” at Georgetown University. That means students pay more than $60,000 per year to hear him lecture. Nonetheless, Seidman apparently wants to end his cushy teaching gig. “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution”...

That question was posed in response to a new report from WORLD on Campus about the pornification of American universities. According to WORLD, self-styled “porn scholars” in fields ranging from literature to law “believe in immersing their students in the porn culture. Last year, 50 schools offered courses that included in-depth pornography content.” Students and their parents—many of whom take out massive loans or a second mortgage to cover outrageously inflated tuition—might “be surprised to learn they are paying…to watch, digest and learn to appreciate pornography in college.” As someone three years out of college, the salacious details of the...

Perk up your ears fellow conservatives, I've encountered a new revelation among liberal academic circles.... according to liberal professors on the UTSA campus if you do not agree with a policy, it's not that you disagree with it, it's just that you don't understand the policy enough to like it. The only class I hate attending this semester happens to be my Public Policy and Administration course. (I didn't have much of a choice according to my academic advisor, so just go with me on this one please.) The teacher is liberal and I've raised my hand to sound off...

From christinerickson@comcast.net Sent Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:05 am Subject Difficult situation in survey Hello, I’m hoping that folks on the list will be able to help me out . . . . I have a student in the U.S. survey, education major/social science emphasis (he’ll be teaching high school). He’s a transfer student from a conservative college . . . absolutely loves history – and a libertarian . . .not a jerk (at least to my face). . . . He wrote a paper . . . where he was supposed to contemplate whether . . . he would...

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Professor Lies to Get Pro-Abortion Group into Catholic College By Gudrun Schultz BOSTON, Massachusetts, March 7, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A professor and a group of abortion activists at Boston College resorted to deception this week in order to bypass school officials and hold an abortion-rights panel discussion on university grounds. The Women’s Health Initiative, an abortion rights group that is not recognized by the university, initially gained permission to hold the panel, called “The Future of Women’s Rights” by telling university officials that they were members of the College Democrats. When the college discovered the deception, they withdrew permission for...

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 23 - A 24-year-old conservative alumnus who announced earlier this month that he planned to pay students at the University of California, Los Angeles, to tape-record the lectures of left-leaning professors backed down after U.C.L.A. officials informed him on Monday that he would be violating school policy. The alumnus, Andrew Jones, said he abandoned the plan to save his student supporters from possible legal action by the university, even though he believed they would be engaged in a "newsgathering" effort protected by the First Amendment. Mr. Jones says he is confident that students will volunteer to tape...

WASHINGTON — Though Christopher Flickinger calls himself "dean" and poses in parodistic photos waving a small American flag and looking stern, he says he's never been more serious about eliminating what he claims is pervasive anti-conservatism on college campuses today. "When I was on campus, I had no help," the recent Ohio State University graduate told FOXNews.com. "I was harassed, intimidated, shouted down." Flickinger, schooled in broadcast journalism, said he wants to provide the support he never had as a lonely conservative in college. That's why in November he launched the Network of College Conservatives to act in part as...

The anniversary of the U.S. Constitution was celebrated last week by the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the Department of Government & Sociology, and the Law and Society Student Organization (LASSO) with a series of week-long discussions and lectures about the document and its meaning. On Sept. 12, students and faculty gathered in the A & S auditorium to hear Dr. Ralph Hemphill, professor of Political Science, lecture about the current constitutional issues before the U.S. Supreme Court. "I do not claim to be an expert on the U.S. Constitution, but a student of its principles," Hemphill said. He...

WASHINGTON - Across the nation, liberal professors are being accused of abusing their conservative students by humiliating them in classes, lowering their grades, forcing them to listen to radical leftist views. Some lawmakers want to even the score. They want to forbid professors from bashing President Bush, mandate that they teach creationism alongside evolution and require them to explain in history class that some doubt the Holocaust existed. In California, legislators considered an academic bill of rights, an eight-point credo designed to increase political diversity in the classroom. The same declaration was debated in Maine. And in Florida and 12...

In the fall of 2004, Greg Thomas, the professor of English at Syracuse University, drew his texts, not from Chaucer or Dickens, but the profanity-laden lyrics of Billboard magazine's rap charts: Thomas introduced a new course devoted to the study of “gangasta” rap starlet Lil’ Kim (Kimberly Jones). Accordingly, Thomas’s for-credit course, offered through the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse, was titled “Hip-Hop Eshu: Queen Bitch 101—The Life and Times of Lil’ Kim.” The twenty-something Thomas saw much to admire in the hip-hop icon. In Lil’ Kim’s foul-mouthed repertoire, Thomas said he glimpsed a mind of uncommon profundity:...

I have to go walk Cosmo and the prospect of picking up his droppings is more appealing than picking up Paul Krugman's. But duty calls. Paul Krugman's latest column is a peripatetic tour of liberal fantasyland. His argument is that American universities are dominated by non-registered Republicans on their faculties for good reason and that complaints that this reflects a "liberal bias" in hiring are off-base. Well, first of all, it's not just liberal bias, it's left-wing bias. Self-described liberals are often perceived as right-wing in much of the academy. A self-identified pro-McCain Democrat might as well show up to...

//2 How Conservatism Works Conservative social orders have often described themselves as civilized, and so one reads in the Wall Street Journal that "the enemies of civilization hate bow ties". But what conservatism calls civilization is little but the domination of an aristocracy. Every aspect of social life is subordinated to this goal. That is not civilization. The reality is quite the opposite. To impose its order on society, conservatism must destroy civilization. In particular conservatism must destroy conscience, democracy, reason, and language. ***snip*** * The Destruction of Reason Conservatism has opposed rational thought for thousands of years. What most...